Excerpts
A childcare centre in New South Wales was approved as “meeting” government standards in the publicly available rating system, but flagged months later as a “very high risk service” in a secret rating system maintained by the Department of Education, the Guardian can reveal.
The centre, which Guardian Australia is choosing not to name, was flagged by officers from the NSW early childhood regulator as being in the highest risk category of childcare services, after officials visited in May 2024 to investigate a complaint.
The service was subjected to numerous visits by inspectors who also monitored all complaints against the centre and notifications by the centre to the regulator over a one-year period, documents shared with the Guardian show.
These notifications included allegations of child neglect, injuries to children, bullying of staff, understaffing of the service and the alleged sexual assault of a child by an educator.
The case illustrates a glaring safety gap in the NSW childcare system, in which public ratings of childcare services, which are determined according to the National Quality Framework (NQF) rating, often differ from the secret risk rating given to centres by the Department of Education.
The NQF rating is displayed publicly on government websites and is one of the only tools available to parents to judge the quality and safety of a centre to which they send their children.
The childcare centre had passed its NQF assessment and rating process in March 2024, where it was judged to be “meeting” quality and safety standards across all categories.
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The secret risk rating system
About 18% of services in NSW were rated high or very high risk in the secret risk rating system, with fewer than 5% in the highest risk category, as of 1 August, the NSW Department of Education told Guardian Australia.
The existence of a secret risk rating system, the RA (risk assessment) risk rating of services (RRS), was highlighted by the Wheeler review into the childcare sector in NSW, conducted earlier this year.
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